The paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for extractive industry companies. It finds little...

We analyze a successive vertical Cournot oligopoly model with homogeneous intermediate and final goods. Under restricted entry in both upstream and downstream markets, the input price continuously falls on a sequential merger path. Partial input foreclosure never occurs. However, when there is...

We examine the impact of the licensing policies of one or more upstream owners of essential intellectual property (IP hereafter) on the variety offered by a downstream industry, as well as on consumers and social welfare. When an upstream IP monopoly increases the number of licenses, it enhances...

In this paper, we discuss the case of the integration between NSK and Amatsuji Steel Ball by using the successive oligopoly model. We show that the integration does not lead to input foreclosure. However, it leads to customer foreclosure, if the fixed cost of a rival firm in the upstream market...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of a vertical merger that raises rivals costs when downstream competition is à la Cournot between firms with constant asymmetric marginal costs. The main result is that such a vertical merger can nevertheless improve welfare if it involves a...

The importance of economics to the analysis and enforcement of competition policy and law has increased tremendously in the developed market economies in the past forty years. In younger and developing market economies, competition law itself has a history of twenty to twenty-five years at most...

This paper studies the effects of vertical integration on innovation in the chipset and smartphone industries. I formulate and estimate a dynamic structural model of a dominant upstream chipset maker and downstream smartphone handset makers. The two sides make dynamic investment decisions and...

Many high technology goods are based on standards that require several essential patents owned by different IP holders. This gives rise to a complements and a double mark-up problem. We compare the welfare effects of two different business strategies dealing with these problems. Vertical...

This article analyzes the effects of net neutrality regulation on investment incentives for Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs), and their implications for social welfare. Concerning the ISPs' investment incentives, we find that capacity expansion decreases the sale...

Vertical mergers within a multi-echelon market result in equilibrium price changes, for wholesalers and retailers, alike. They may also impact the product variety that is available to the consumer, i.e., the equilibrium product assortment sold in the market. In this paper, we consider the...